


We Used to Burn Brighter

by svint_of_the_deep



Category: Dark Souls (Video Games), Dark Souls III
Genre: How Do I Tag, first work pls be nice, tiny bit of gore, vague on purpose
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-19
Updated: 2018-09-19
Packaged: 2019-07-14 06:05:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,220
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16034522
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/svint_of_the_deep/pseuds/svint_of_the_deep
Summary: Just a post - usurpation of fire one shot about just how empty the world is! External narrator reminiscing on the journey from chosen undead to a mighty ruler in a world without light. (I wrote this before the dlc and may write an update!)





	We Used to Burn Brighter

Midnight. Or had time stopped since the sun left in favor of a moon you can only see once you’re higher than the clouds. You have armies that rise and fall at your command, yet no land or empire left to invade. Every one of them faded from existence, locked inside manuscripts that are too fragile to be opened in this dark. Torches light your way as you leave your room. This bed and the crown which rests beside it were never meant to be your own; instead they were for someone mightier, with more of a soul than you. Yet every one of them failed.  
So they brought you back, forced you to live after the first throne you held crumbled and you abandoned the second, looking for something more than the end of a journey, more than eyes into the future. The life you led before all of this, the one where you were still afraid of dying, no longer exists in your mind. Family, friends, lovers…all are gone, probably in a worse state than you are now. You’re happy you’ve forgotten them. As you walk outside, you can almost see the moon in the inky dark. The torch you hold struggles against the wind, but stays firm amidst the cold. Everyone who got you this far is long gone, dead and buried the way it always should’ve been.

You carry the memories of them with you, telling their stories. You are feeble compared to their heroics. Together, you buried your foes, erecting their armor in your halls. Civilization has died, but you keep their honor intact. The lost and forgotten, the healers and traitors, those who sought death and those who fought valiantly against it, are all remembered here. Dragged far from homes they knew they would never return to, they rest here.  
The few knights that remain from your first journey remember you, and you keep them closer than everything else. They walked far with you, almost losing themselves along the way. And they were waiting for you, in the cathedral where you met, and outside the last fire you would ever see. All of them knew it had to end like this. They’ve been scorched, wounded, and driven insane; they have lost more than they can count. They warned you about making friends and having heroes, knowing full well the cost once they were gone. When it ends, this long walk to the end, you tell them what happened.

The dark, the illusions of light, and the visions. The corruption and curses, every time you almost died and every time you did. How unsettling the quiet after death is, and the last words in hurried whispers that you were warned never to forget. Thank you’s, names of friends and lovers, fears that this death would be the last one. How it is to face the end of the world knowing that once again, you’ll survive to see the next one build itself up in its place.  
You’ve carried yourself, carried your dying friends and enemies to the mouth of hell and back. You tell yourself that someone may have loved them, that someone would care to remember them once they’re gone. But it’s only the important ones who carry on, the ones that leave people behind. So you bring them their sword, a ring, whatever’s left of them back home.

Was it ever supposed to be this way? You were supposed to die a long time ago, and stay dead. Why were you the one who kept on living? To love and loathe both the light and dark is a struggle that is both mental and physical. To some, staring into the abyss is far beyond the cusp of insanity. The abyss is a silent peace that slowly eats away at you. It starts, like the unburned rot of decay, with the inside. You can’t eat, and eventually even the pain of hunger fades away. The first gash, or when you must carry your other arm on your back is a time of fear. Burned and poisoned, sores oozing with pus as blood and sweat mix in a murky cocktail, making you even more enticing to the foaming mouth of the world you believed you knew. But to the fire you return. In an instant, you are whole again, left trying to cope with how the lack of pain, of any feeling, leaves you exhausted. There is no brief repose, no rest in a landscape void of purpose.  
Purpose. Whose did you inherit? With eternity at your disposal, did you even know your own? It lingers in the few lights that remain as you try and remember who you were. The reflection in the mirror will never tell you. Your face has changed since you tried cleaning poison from it in a forest you can’t picture even if you tried. Luckily, you’ve managed to look the least bit human, but heavy is the head that wears the crown. Especially the one you killed to receive.

This has been a loveless journey, filled with its share of broken things trying to put themselves back together. Even beyond the scope of sanity, at the moment of death, their lover’s name is the last scream from their lips. You almost wish there was an afterlife so they would never have to roam, looking for the missing pieces of themselves. Graves on top of graves, battle after battle, you’ve walked alone. Love. Did that exist for your kind? Was it deemed too unnecessary that it was removed long ago? Do you love the things you kill, or love what you leave behind? But misery loves company, and you have only the silence of an endless night to share a bed with. Power can never be without cost.  
Everyone has tried to mold their journey into a lover, a companion, someone to stand with as the last rays of the sun disappear from the sky. Now that light is gone. So is the promise of finding someone, anyone, besides the haunting images of everyone you could have loved, or could have saved. You chose to become humanity’s new god, ruling a kingdom of bone and ash. You were promised a spouse, someone to guide you through the timelessness. Promises like that are meant to be broken. In death do we part, in death do we come together once more. Those who are meant to serve you can never truly love you. But you already figured that out for yourself.

So here you are, finally closing the book you were forced to write so long ago. You outlasted them all. Every god, friend, and enemy…every creature that was destined to live forever. As you finish, and the end slips off your tongue, your knights move to your side of the table. They are finally aware that your humanity is not what makes you weak. In fact, it is the opposite. There is a reason why your ancestors were not afraid of the dark that could never be stopped. They waited for the mantle of greatness to fade, refusing to hold themselves to the standards which everything else was bound to. History, you tell them, is not written by the victors or the powerful, but by the ones who survive.


End file.
